Visit just about any pizza parlor or casual Italian eatery in the United States. You’ll find a jar of crushed red pepper flakes on the table alongside the salt and pepper. This “pizza pepper” may come to mind when you hear the phrase “red chili flakes” or “crushed red pepper.” But the Sichuan chili flakes in our spice cabinet are a whole different ball game. Many of our favorite recipes simply wouldn’t be the same without them.
Let’s talk more about what this ingredient is, and how to use it.
What Are Sichuan Chili Flakes?
Chinese Sichuan chili flakes, or làjiāo fēn (辣椒芬), start out as spicy red chili peppers. Varieties include small “Facing Heaven” peppers (named for how they grow pointed skyward) or the slightly milder er jin tiao peppers popular in Sichuan Province.
The seeds of a chili pepper are a main source of its heat, so make no mistake: this spice can pack a punch. Adding a dash or two is a quick way to crank up the heat of a recipe.
However, Sichuan chili flakes do tend to be a bit milder than standard Italian crushed red pepper. They’re also more vividly red and aromatic. (Think: the nuttiness of popcorn.) This is key for some of their most common applications.
All that said, there is some variation even among Sichuan chili flakes. Some chili flakes will be dry ground and less roasted. Others will be fried in oil before grinding and will have a higher moisture content. Either one will work beautifully for all of our recipes, just be mindful of oil temperatures when using them.
You can see in the picture below that all of these chili flakes vary in coarseness, roast-level (the right-hand bag is more deeply roasted), and moisture content (the middle bag is less dry).
How To Use Them
While they make a great seasoning on their own, Sichuan chili flakes are also essential to Chili Oil. We have no shame in how much we use this stuff! We sometimes use both chili oil and Sichuan chili flakes to spice up recipes like our Lanzhou Beef Noodle Soup.
In addition to making chili oil, they are also critical to Chiu Chow Chili Sauce. With plenty of garlic, soy sauce, and sugar to balance out the heat, it can turn any dish into something extraordinary.
Naturally, red chili flakes also show up in countless classic Sichuan dishes. Some examples include Suan Ni Bai Rou (sliced pork with garlic sauce) and Sichuan Boiled Beef, which is incredibly delicious despite its ho-hum name.
Our recipe for Kou Shui Ji (literally “saliva chicken” because of how mouth-wateringly delicious it is) is not quite as spicy as the version you’d find in Sichuan Province. But it still serves up that distinctive ma la (spicy-numbing) flavor profile thanks to the combination of chili and Sichuan peppercorns.
Red chili flakes, ground Sichuan peppercorns, and cumin also form the trifecta of Xinjiang spices. These flavors are perfect for everything from Spicy Fried Chicken Wings to Cumin Lamb Burgers and our great vegan/vegetarian alternative, Cumin Potatoes.
Buying & Storing
You can purchase Sichuan red chili flakes at Chinese grocery stores. You can also find them online from Asian grocery merchants like sayweee.com and The Mala Market. The Mala Market in particular sources their Sichuan Chili Flakes directly from small producers in China.
When you open a fresh package, transfer them to an airtight container for long-term storage.
When properly stored in a cool, dry place (like your pantry), they will last for two to three years.
We’ve also gotten questions over the years about growing and drying your own chilies. We’ve not yet done this, but rest assured we have aspirations for our home garden and hope to one day post detailed instructions!
Substitutions for Sichuan Chili Flakes
In short, there is no replacement for Sichuan chili flakes. But if you’re truly hard-pressed, consider these:
Italian crushed red pepper can be used in a pinch. However, the chilies used for “pizza pepper” are usually roasted longer before crushing. As a result, Italian crushed red pepper doesn’t offer the vibrant red hue or flavor characteristic of the Sichuan version. Cooking them in oil can also result in a slightly burnt taste.
Many folks accidentally use Korean chili flakes or powder, which are not at all spicy. If you use these, your results will not be anywhere close to the Chinese version (which isn’t to say that you won’t get a pleasant chili oil that you enjoy).
All of that is to say—we definitely suggest sourcing Sichuan chili flakes online! In the past couple of years, they have become much more widely available, at least in the U.S.
Our Favorite Recipes That Use This Ingredient
Homemade Chili Oil
Homemade Chiu Chow Chili Sauce
Sichuan Boiled Beef (水煮牛肉 – Shuizhu Niurou)
Cumin Potatoes
Spicy Fried Chicken Wings
Lanzhou Beef Noodle Soup
Sichuan Chicken In Chili Oil Sauce (Kou Shui Ji)
I am unable to eat chilis except for sichuan. I’d like to make a chili oil with sichuan pepper but don’t want to spring $14 for flakes I may never use again. Could I pound my peppercorns and use the broken up pieces to make the chili oil? If so, how fine should I make them. However, if the Sichuan flakes are seeds (like crushed red peppers) then that wouldn’t work. Thank you for all your advice and fabulous recipies.
Hi Cynthis, I will try to answer your questions—hopefully I am interpreting right.
1. Sichuan peppercorns are different from chili peppers. They are seed pods rather than fruits.
2. A chili oil of just Chinese sichuan peppercorns would probably not taste too good. Imagine ground black pepper mixed with oil. That’s what it would be like. I think just having the spices in the fragrant oil without the chili pepper flakes might even risk tasting a little bit medicinal. I can’t say for sure as I have not tried this.
3. Sichuan peppercorns do have black seeds but they are not like pepper seeds. It is best to buy just the husk as the black seeds are bitter and bad-tasting all around regardless of allergy status.
While we enjoy Mala Market chili flakes which are pricier, you can buy Sichuan chili pepper flakes (again, different from Sichuan peppercorns) at a Chinese grocery store for about $3-5. That would be my recommendation to you. Hope that helps!
Thank you so much – this is the third time I’ve followed your recipe… and only the third time I’ve veer tried to make chili oil. Your instructions perfect and the results get better and better as I loosen up a bit… for instance, I was too cautious before when pouring the hot oil over the chili flakes and it was not hot enough – no sizzle, no ‘popcorn’ smell; but after an hour of seeping ~ 250º, I raised the temp to a bit over 300º just before pouring and just right. I make 3 cups at a time – keeps very well in the fridge. Delicious on so many things -:)
So happy you’re enjoying the chili oil recipe, Peter, and that you calibrated that temperature just right! It’s definitely a cook-by-feel thing sometimes, and it sounds like you did a great job.
So, I bought a bunch of sichuan peppercorns. This is a completely different ingredient, correct? I assume from a different plant?
Yes, Sichuan peppercorns are different from chili flakes, as they’re actually from the prickly ash plant, rather than a pepper plant. Here’s our Sichuan peppercorn article: https://thewoksoflife.com/sichuan-peppercorns/
Where do you suggest buying Sichuan chili flakes online? I can at times find them at a local Chinese market, but not always. I’ve had to resort to using Korean chili flakes or Italian ones at times. If so, which ones should I get? Thank you
Hi Nick, mala market has a great Sichuan chili flake product for sale at their online market.
Hello! I’m a bit confused whether to use lajiaofen （粉）or lajiaomian （面 ）for making chiuchow chilli oil . Apparently lajiaomian is a chilli pepper spice blend. Which one works better?
Hi Chris, yes, the lajiaomian is a blend of chili and spices while the lajiaofen is pure chili, which is what we call for in most of our recipes including chiu chow oil. We tend to use discrete ingredients rather than blends in most of our recipes so we can control the amounts of each spice.
In your post you mentioned adding peppers to your housegarden and as someone who has been growing her own peppers for years, I can highly recommend doing so. Not many things beat the beauty of a pepper plant full of red/orange/yellow or even white peppers. Thanks for pointing out the variety used for the crushed chillies. Even though I have about 20 different varieties already I‘m tempted to add one more 😃
I have started to make my own chili oil last year and so far have used a mix of different red varieties from my garden, one of them a variety I extracted from a whole pepper that served as decoration on a dish I ordered in Xian.
So if you have no access to Sichuan ground peppers a mix of different varieties works pretty well too.
Still tempted to grow the original ones though 😁
I’ve been making hot chili oil using Habanero peppers. 1/8 drop off a teaspoon into your soup can set your tongue on fire. I Love any type of hot peppers and enjoy eating them raw, fried, baked and in oil and in vinegars. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Barbara, I totally agree. There’s nothing like growing beautiful edible plants in your home garden or kitchen :)
I bought two bags of what I thought would work at the local Korean grocer, Thai chili flakes but then after I made my first batch of Chiu Chow I found out that they are insanely hot. I have another bag I’m giving to a friend. I made Chiu Chow again recently with “Fiesta” brand red chili flakes and it’s a bit crunchy and still a bit spicier than I would prefer. I’m going to have to get some Sichuan pepper flakes and maybe even rehydrate them a bit before preparing the oil next time.
Hi Wayne try mala market’s Sichuan chili flakes